'Captain': Thrills at Sea, With Some Drift

In the book that "Captain Phillips" was based on, the merchant mariner Richard Phillips notes Mark Twain's remark that going to sea is like going to jail with a chance of drowning. For the man whose container ship was hijacked by Somali pirates in 2009, going to sea was like going to prison with a strong chance of dying. His story is extraordinary, and it's told by two perfectly matched collaborators— Tom Hanks, the Hollywood embodiment of American decency and self-effacing courage, and Paul Greengrass, the virtuoso director of action adventures with a documentary feel and a fidelity to facts. The film succeeds on its own terms—an exciting entertainment that makes us feel good about the outcome, and about the reach of American power, rather than its limits. Yet the narrative container is far from full. There isn't enough incident or complexity to sustain the entire length of this elaborately produced star vehicle.

Watch a clip for the film "Captain Phillips." Tom Hanks plays Captain Richard Phillips, who, in real life, sacrificed himself to save his ship's crew during a Somali pirate hijacking in 2009. (Photo/Video: Columbia Pictures)

The story starts with its instantly appealing hero leaving home in Vermont— Catherine Keener plays his wife—to go to work off the coast of Somalia. Rich Phillips is appealing not only because he's played by Mr. Hanks, but because he's a high-tech, globalized version of a venerable archetype, the quietly competent Yankee seafarer. It's fascinating to follow him aboard his vessel, the Maersk Alabama, as he takes command of the huge thing, but his comfortingly familiar routines don't last for long. A collision lies ahead—not with a ship, but with a third-world culture represented by new versions of the corsair archetype: four young desperados with deadly weapons, at least one of them tech-savvy and all of them determined to make a killing that will, in the best case, be purely monetary.

The leader of the Somalis, who board the Alabama from a scruffy skiff, comes to be called Skinny—Skeletal wouldn't have had the same ring. He's played with such ferocious charisma that it's almost impossible to believe that Somalia-born Barkhad Abdi, who lives in Minnesota, is making his acting debut in the role. (Mr. Greengrass also excels at directing actors.) Skinny insists that the raid is "just business—we want money; when everybody paid we go home." He also insists that he and his cohorts are fishermen who've been driven to crime by the predatory practices of Western fishing fleets. It may be more complicated than that, even if Billy Ray's script chooses not to explore the complications. But whoever Skinny may be, he's a captain, too, and the film's dramatic core—as distinct from its much hotter action core—concerns the two men's struggle for dominance, and for control of a ship being held for ransom.

Phillips tests, prods and observes his rival shrewdly. He is, by turns, affable and tough, fearless while appropriately fearful. The Somali is fearless too, but with dangerous displays of bravado. Having taken Phillips hostage, he's unfazed by the prospect of taking on America as well. All of this is suspenseful, as far as it goes, but it can't go further because, in an odd way, the film has fallen hostage to its own integrity.

Apart from the inevitable telescoping and heightening for dramatic purposes, plus some minor—and in a couple of cases foolish—spasms of invented heroics, "Captain Phillips," hews fairly closely to the events set forth in the book. The movie is essentially what it claims to be, based on a true story that happens to culminate in a display of U.S. naval power and Navy SEAL expertise. ( Barry Ackroyd did the spectacular cinematography. The film was edited by Christopher Rouse.)

That sets it in sharp contrast to a recent film on the same subject, one that is, not coincidentally, coming out next week on DVD and Blu-ray. Tobias Lindholm's "A Hijacking," from Denmark in Danish, English and Somali, is a fiction film that barely registered as a blip on the scope of the international movie market. Yet "A Highjacking" is wonderfully dramatic in its interweaving of disparate elements—enthralling characters; intricate negotiations with startlingly sophisticated pirates; explorations of geopolitics and corporate imperatives; and, through it all, a question of life or death that's answered from the start in "Captain Phillips," a Hollywood action adventure with a beloved star in the title role.

I mention the Danish film not to suggest what "Captain Phillips" should have been, but to suggest why it is what it is. The script was based on a book that doesn't lack for personal heroism, or a thrilling climax. But the book recounts a string of factual events that, by their repetitive nature, lack the density of first-rate fiction. That's why the film plods along so perplexingly while the pirates search the Alabama from top to bottom for its apparently vanished crew; why its portraits of the pirates are as shallow as they are striking, and why so much time is given over to the pirates yelling and screaming at Rich Phillips, or at each other. It also sheds light on why Mr. Hanks's most powerful scene—you'll know it when you see it—is in fact a piece of fiction. That's not a bad thing, mind you, but a good thing. It's based on true feelings.

Watch a clip from the film "A River Changes Course." Filmmaker Kalyanee Mam travels to her homeland to capture the stories of three Cambodians struggling to maintain their way of life while the modern world closes in around them. (Photo: Migrant Films)

'A River Changes Course'

Ever so calmly, sometimes languorously, Kalyanee Mam's documentary feature reveals the anguishing sense of loss behind a profusion of ravishingly beautiful images. Ms. Mam was born in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge regime; she and her family fled that shattered nation's refugee camps and emigrated to the U.S., where she was educated, became a lawyer and a gifted cinematographer. In recent years she has returned to her homeland several times to film "A River Changes Course." Beautiful images can be a distraction in a serious documentary, but that's hardly the case here. They draw us in so we can better understand the hurtling changes that endanger the future of Cambodia and, by extension, much of the developing world.

The story is told through three families connected only by pressures they understand imperfectly, if at all. Khieu Mok and her mother cultivate rice in a small village outside the capital, Phnom Penh. Mired in debt, they're forced to borrow more money to buy a buffalo and additional land that they need to survive. Sari Math and his family live in a floating village on central Cambodia's Tonlé Sap River. He's forced to quit school and go to work when the family's livelihood is threatened by dwindling catches that result from large fish traps they can't afford, and by the proliferation of illegal fishing. Sav Samourn and her family live high in the remote mountains of northeast Cambodia in what could pass for a jungle Eden—butterflies, orchids, cashew orchards, rice paddies, dense forest—except that the forests are being devoured by corporate loggers.

Ms. Mam follows these families and their distinctive ways of life with her eyes wide open. What's so unusual about her approach is that she sees just as clearly as an artist, a journalist and a de facto anthropologist. (Her film is enhanced by David Mendez's haunting music.)

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Khieu Mok in 'A River Changes Course'
Film Collaborative

The pastoral and littoral scenes are lovely, but the loveliness masks a degrading environment. The children's faces are photographed luminously, but the kids' well-being is shadowed by pollution and the lure of urbanization. Khieu, who goes to work in a Phnom Penh garment factory, thinks of herself as "divided in half." She fantasizes that someone will bring employment to her village by building a factory, but that the village will somehow remain unspoiled, an idyllic idealization of Phnom Penh. Sav has an undivided fear of what has already happened, and what's to come. "Before," she says of her cherished surroundings, "we wouldn't dare walk through here. There were tigers, bears and elephants. Now, all the wild animals are gone. We're no longer afraid of wild animals, and ghosts. Now we're afraid of people. The elders say they're afraid of people cutting down the forests."

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'Bloody Sunday' (2002)

An air of fatefulness suffuses "Bloody Sunday," Paul Greengrass's stunning re-creation of the day in September 1972, when 13 unarmed civilians were killed by British soldiers during a peace march in Northern Ireland. Thirty years later, the bloodbath is still surrounded by controversy, so the film can't be taken as a definitive factual account. Yet it makes a powerful case for the contention that 3,000 British paratroopers, presumably sent to keep the peace, were looking for a fight when they arrived, and that their contingency plan was nothing more than a sequence of ghastly blunders waiting to happen.

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'The Bourne Supremacy' (2004)

For his Hollywood debut, Paul Greengrass directed this impressive sequel in which Matt Damon's haunted assassin, Jason Bourne, is still trying to figure out who he is. He starts out in Goa, a photogenic state on the western coast of India, and he remains on the goa from start to finish. The movie keeps you in a state of reasonably contented attentiveness. Still, the nonstop action reminded me of George Carlin's alarmed response to the ticket agent who tells him he's on a nonstop flight. At some point you yearn for solid ground.

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'United 93' (2006)

"Captain Phillips" isn't Paul Greengrass's first fact-inspired film about a hijacking. Five years after the fact, he directed this literally spellbinding vision of what happened on the ground as the twin towers of the World Trade Center were struck, and what may have happened in the cockpit and cabin of the hijacked airliner that was diverted, by a passenger revolt, from its flight path to the U.S. Capitol. The filmmaker's mosaic—and lapidary—technique is similar to the one he employed in "Bloody Sunday." It worked superbly then, and just as superbly here.

We pay people like Tom Hanks to entertain us. In fact we pay them very well. However, without a script they usually don't have much of value to contribute so I certainly wouldn't pay to have them think for me.

I was interested in seeing "Captain Phillips" until I saw that the director is the same one who did "The Bourne Supremacy". The constantly moving camera in that movie is nauseating; it is like the whole film takes place during a massive earthquake. I suppose it is intended to heighten the action, but as Joe points out the story was pretty much non-stop action already.

Maybe the director has moved on from this, but the clips that I have seen appear to have the same "feature". When the technique used to create the movie makes it difficult (or sickening) to watch, the story is lost, as is my interest in seeing it.

Victoria harbor, in the Seychelles, is crammed with giant ocean-going fishing boats; mostly from Europe, some from Asia, that are busy refueling and reprovisioning so they can catch every fish off the coast of east Africa without being supervised. They prefer tuna but will take off with anything that will fill their holds.

The only thing I don't quite get from the article: so what exactly is wrong with the movie? other than the critic's desperation to criticize... And 1 more thing, unrelated: Castaway is only good in the eyes of someone who never heard of Robinson Crusoe.

It's amazing to me how often comments in the WSJ turn to politics, no matter what the subject matter. What the hell does this review have to do with Obama or the GOP? I simply don't care about Tom Hanks's politics. Completely irrelevant. As always, Joe, thanks for the excellent reviews and DVD tips.

I think Tom has confused himself with his roles. By playing a hero, like this Brave Captain, he thinks he has a moral perspective, and can choose a government that can take over our lives. Because he wishes Obama could manage our lives to a greater outcome, he thinks it's so. Sorry Tom, it only happens in the movies. And you are only acting like a decent guy.

Under the Hollywood wish regime, the facts are that the rich get richer, and the gap gets bigger.

"Tom Hanks, the Hollywood embodiment of American decency and self-effacing courage. . ."

Lost me. Why would Tom Hanks be the embodiment of decency and courage? Because he's an actor? That makes no sense. I see our troops as the embodiment of American decency and self-effacing courage. Tom Hanks is just an actor who occasionally plays the way Hollywood thinks our troops should be.

Anybody who wants the real story on Somali piracy should visit the authoritative British Web site, OeanusLive.org. And, in case any moviegoer leaves 'Captain Phillips' thinking, "The pirates are just trying to make a living, like anybody else," might consider searching for the OceanusLive story, 'The Challenge of Survival as a Pirate Hostage' (July 25, 2012). Very, very few hijacks in the High Risk Area have a happy ending: crewmen rescued unharmed, pirates dead.

I love Tom Hanks in movies, loved Cast Away and Forrest Gump. I might catch this one on DVD. But I feel bad about Hanks commenting or Tweaking that he will vote for Obama for 4 more years after this one! He wants Obama to serve another 4 years (22nd amendment be damned). So again we have talented actors and performers who have no brains. Should I care? Was it Laura Ingram who wrote "Shut up and act!". Now THERE'S a smart lady.

I thank you for the review as well Joe. Your reviews are the primary guide I use to identify which movies are worth looking into, or worth skipping.

Mr Shea, Tom has made his brand political. He has used it to politically influence America, and he has used it to raise money for a political ideal. He has, by his choice, conflated his acting and his politics. I wish he didn't.

Chris, it turns into politics because Tom Hanks plays characters and makes money off of the same type of real-life people that he disdains publicly. That to me is fraud and I can't support him with my money.

Hanks, like other actors, knows exactly who he is.The problem is that the audiences tend to forget.

Clint Eastwood isn't a "tough guy" any more than trouser-dropping Rock Hudson; and Charlton Heston may have been a flak for the NRA, but when he pushed guns it wasn't with the moral authority of Moses handing down the Ten Commandments.

Actors do a job; how we interpret their performance is our problem, not theirs

Sinatra was the cool ladies' manClint Eastwood - the 44 magnum solution to every problemWoody Allen - the overintellectualization of picking out a few potatoes in the local Shoprite

They're all just doing their job - fulfilling our fantasies while living a whole different life.

Even Reagan, while acting the role of President, was just a guy with a ranch in Santa Barbara with excellent speechwriters and backers who only wanted a lower rate on their personal income tax to finance his major production

because you and your buddy would rather spend the next 30 years watching re-runs of clint eastwood yelling at a chair

if you won't go to some guy's movie because you don't like his politics, you really should limit your viewing to old saturday morning cartoons - Walt was a pretty reactionary fellow and had a real gut hatred for unions

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